Output details

Test Drive: Ferrari Racing Legends. The game was released globally in 3 DVD formats: Windows PC, Microsoft Xbox 360, and Sony Playstation 3.

My score to Ferrari Racing Legends explores possible musical representations of the world’s most prestigious automobile marque and its most powerful brand (Brand Finance Global 500, 2013). Unlike Audi, BMW or Mercedes, Ferrari has no sonic or musical identity since it is never represented in advertisements on television or in cinema.

My score, as a result, fuses operatic solo vocal performances, large-scale orchestral textures, dynamic driving percussion, choir, guitars mixed with electronic elements from popular music genres and ‘race-day atmospherics’ (tannoy announcements, pit-to-car radio communications and car sounds). The operatic and orchestral vocabulary is used to signify the ‘epic’, the Italian heritage, sporting tradition and the manifest beauty of the vehicles. The musical language here is often neo-romantic and the vocal writing for Mezzo Soprano references the work of Verdi and Puccini. The electronic elements are contemporary and are used to represent the power, performance and technological facets of the Ferrari brand. As Karen Collins (Game Sound, p.129) notes, there is a well-established association of cars with popular music. My embedding of ‘race-day atmospherics,’ inside the music itself, seeks to enhance player immersion.

The score also explores musical responses to an unprecedented scenario in the racing simulation genre. In a genre in which music is rarely heard during gameplay and narrative content is not customary, I investigated how emotion might be conveyed to player during a ‘diegetic’ episode. The player receives a message that their teammate has been killed on the circuit. In order to relate the horror of this event, and to elicit an emotional response, my Lacrimosa for solo mezzo-soprano, solo violin and chamber ensemble is played. Extensive experimentation showed that the most affective presentation was to allow the music to flood and dominate the sonic space at the expense of all other sound effects.